


The Long Haul

by galacticproportions



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Complicated Emotions, Established Relationship, M/M, Married for Health Insurance, Post-War, Sex is mentioned but not described in detail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: How could a word likehusbandcontain everything Finn and Poe were with each other—every time they'd saved each other's lives and made each other come and complemented each other's strategies and saved each other's lives, again, and wept in each other's arms and made each other almost piss their pants laughing, everything they knew about each other from public face to inmost heart? Why should they let a planetary government in on that just because that planet happened to have the best neuroprosthetic tech in the galaxy?





	The Long Haul

“No,” Poe said.

The faintly bluish sun of Gdoxo 5 suffused the little office, cooling the color of Finn's face. He looked adamant as well as beautiful, and it wasn't just because of the light making its way into Poe's good eye. “Residency permits take up to a year. You don't have a year.”

“I could try to raise the money.” 

“Or you could take advantage of a government doing what it should do, which is taking care of its people for free.”

He didn't say _raise it from where _or _raise it how. _Poe appreciated that, but: “_Everyone _should get medical care for free. And governments don't have any business in people's relationships. And I'm not gonna marry you just to get something I couldn't have otherwise.”

Finn sighed. “You realize you're taking two contradictory positions, right? Maybe three.” When Poe opened his mouth to say—something, he didn't know what yet, something reasonable and principled and argument-winning—Finn added, “You don't have to marry me if you don't want to.”

“It's not that I—Finn! This isn't about me loving you, you know that, right?” Finn's expression didn't change. “It's not—it's the wrong way to go about it. It's like a treaty. It's like a financial contract. Nothing wrong with a treaty,” he added quickly, “or a financial contract, either, they're good for what they're good for, it just doesn't belong in—in what we--”

Poe stopped, because there wasn't a word for what they were, what they were _doing._ That was the whole point_. _How could a word like _husband _contain everything they were with each other—every time they'd saved each other's lives and made each other come and complemented each other's strategies and saved each other's lives, again, and wept in each other's arms and made each other almost piss their pants laughing, everything they knew about each other from public face to inmost heart? Why should they let a planetary government in on that just because that planet happened to have the best neuroprosthetic tech in the galaxy?

“My parents weren't married,” he added. “And that didn't stop them—didn't stop my dad from staying with my mom until--” He stopped. Thirty-five years gone now, and unnumbered other people dead in spite of him and because of him, and he still couldn't count on getting the words out.

Finn reached across and touched his hand, and they breathed together.

Poe thought maybe that would be the end of it, at least for now. But when they'd counted five, Finn said, “You've been fake-cheerful ever since you got here.”

“I thought I was being normal.”

“You were,” Finn said. “You were being normal for you when you can't fly. Which is fake-cheerful. Which is cover for feeling like shit.” He brought Poe's hand to his lips. “You could have a lifetime of that. _We _could have a lifetime of that, if you go past the six months without intervention. Or we could get married and you could have a twenty-six-day testing and fitting period, which I know is how long it takes because I checked, and a 120-day recovery and acclimation, and then you could be back in a cockpit, and you could just be how you are.”

“And that's the guy you love.”

He meant it to come out nice and conciliatory, but it didn't, somehow. Finn let go of his hand and stood up and paced around the room, the way he always did when he was getting himself under control. It wasn't very far to pace. Three years running the Gdoxoi Defense Bureau for them, Poe thought, you'd think they could've given him a bigger office.

“I'd love you no matter how you were,” Finn said finally. “I know I came into all of this kind of late but I sort of thought that's what getting married meant. You can do what you want, I'm gonna be here no matter what. But--”

But Poe's optic nerve wasn't. That was what Finn wasn't saying, because other than _I love you _and _I want you,_ they had too much respect for each other to say things that both of them already knew. That was the reason for all of the—whatever this was. The medics had given him six months before the degeneration became irreversible, and that was two months ago.

It wasn't that he didn't believe Finn when he said he'd be there. He did believe him. That was the problem.

He didn't want to be a burden to Finn, something _tied _to him, something he resented.

He wanted them to wake up to each other every day, and choose each other.

He wanted to fly, wanted to see the starfield spread in front of him, wanted it with a hunger he could feel in his gut, in the soles of his feet, across the bridge of his nose, on the back of his tongue.

He wanted to be free. He wanted _everyone _to be free. After he fully understood that his mother wasn't coming back, it was all he had wanted, and he had expected to die wanting it.

“Okay,” he said.

*

For something Poe didn't even really want to do, being engaged took an awful lot of time and bureaucracy. Gdoxo 5 seemed to prefer its residents tied to their datapads. They also seemed to favor larger marital groupings than two: there were seven spaces for every question. There were blood tests. There were meetings and appointments. There were more forms to fill out than when Poe was in the New Republic fleet, and that was saying a hell of a lot.

Finn did his share of it, of course, but he also had his Defense Bureau responsibilities, and ex-trooper mentoring sessions and a pickup grav-ball game on the outskirts of the city. Poe's work, remotely coordinating relief efforts for recovering First Order-occupied worlds, didn't take up nearly as much time. Once he had residency—_spousal _residency—he'd be eligible to work here. And vote for members of the Planetary Authority, he supposed, and drop their garbage off at the city incinerators, and—for fuck's sake.

Either out of respect for Poe or because he really didn't think it was a big deal, Finn was refraining from any kind of fuss. “Mineer in my office said she'd come and be a witness,” he said, over a dinner of perrit root stew and noodles. “And she can bring her sister who's on parental leave to be the other one, if you don't mind having a kid there. The kid's pretty quiet, Mineer says.”

“Sure,” Poe said. “Sounds good.” And then, remembering, “Tell her thanks from me.”

“Will do,” Finn said, and went to scrub the dishes. Poe dried them with a microfiber towel—the Gdokaa didn't prioritize household appliances, and every apartment had a power ration. Normally, if they were both home for a meal and cleanup, it was an occasion for humming and water-flicking and towel-snapping and eventually chivvying each other into bed. But they were constrained, now. Because, Poe thought, expediency had become part of why they were together.

_C'mon,_ he said to himself as he put the dishes away. _Like you didn't fool around with people before you met Finn because it was expedient?_

_That was different,_ he told himself impatiently.

_Why? Because it was wartime?_

_No, because it was before I met Finn._

_You're being stupid, _one half of his brain told the other half, and the other half wanted to argue but couldn't find a comeback, and he had the headache that came from trying to do with one eye what his brain, taken altogether, wanted to do with two. “I'm gonna turn in early,” he said.

The next day brought a holocall from Karé Kun, who with Iolo—all that was left of Rapier Squadron—was establishing a flight school in the Inner Rim. “You wanna come speak at the opening? A real ace pilot! The hero of Andatar! The kids'll freak.”

Andatar was the battle where he took the ocular damage. He hadn't told her or Iolo how bad it was. He hadn't told Kes, either. “You're just as much an ace pilot as I am,” he told her. “More. I can't even fly right now.”

“You will,” she said with serene, unfounded confidence. “C'mon! If you catch the Baffin-Nezarim shuttle you can be here for the opening, it's in a tenday standard, plenty of time.”

Shit. “Sorry, that's the one day I can't do.”

“Why not? You got important paperwork? Fixing up BB-8?”

He wished he hadn't told her he was underemployed. “No, actually, I'm getting married.”

A silence, to the point where he started to wonder if the call had stalled out—there'd been a slight lag the whole time. Then a squawk that almost fried the speakers. “You're getting _what?”_

He begged her not to tell anyone, not even Iolo—some hope, since the two of them gossiped like they breathed—and not to come. “Of course we're coming!” she said indignantly.

“Aren't you kind of opening an entire school?”

“It's _our _school, we decide when it opens. We'll put it back a week. We'll say the plumbing needs an overhaul, or something.”

“It isn't—it's just for--” he took a breath and let it out. “It's just practical.”

“You shut up,” Karé suggested. “People getting married need witnesses, right? Me and Iolo, we're your witnesses. Problem solved. Two whisper birds, one stone.”

“You're not supposed to throw stones at them,” Poe said. “They're endangered.”

The whole problem of guests came up again, only worse, when Finn asked, hesitantly in a way that was rare for him, if Rey could be present.

“Sure,” Poe said with a lack of enthusiasm that even he could hear.

“It's just that she's--”

“I know,” Poe said quickly. “I know.” He also knew he didn't, not really. He enjoyed Rey and admired her and was proud to have fought by her side, and her final humiliation of Kylo Ren was something that he sometimes thought of to cheer himself up when he was feeling particularly low, but he knew that the bond that she and Finn shared was outside his understanding. Not deeper than what he and Finn had, but equally deep on a different axis. “She should be there, buddy, you're right.”

It was a concession that the wedding meant something besides access to eyesight-saving surgery. That there was meaning _in _it beyond the meaning they already made and were making each day. Poe didn't like that, but he didn't really see how he could have gotten out of it.

It turned out to be a moot point, because Rey couldn't be there; she couldn't even be reached, the Temple acolyte told Finn over a crackling connection. Something about deep meditation, a cleansing trance that was essential for restoring the balance of the Force, or something. They couldn't risk bringing her out of it without doing a lot of damage to the balance or to her. Or something. Anyway, they seemed to think so, and Poe couldn't talk them out of it, and Finn didn't try.

Maybe they weren't as constrained as Poe had thought, though, because after they cut the holoconnection they ended up spending most of the evening in bed—nothing too elaborate, just dirty and easy. After, Poe lay next to Finn getting his breath back, his face recently and carelessly wiped clean, as content as he'd been in days. When he tried to get up to piss, Finn tightened an arm across his chest. So that was all right.

“Are you gonna tell Kes?” Finn asked later, when they were falling asleep, and just like that Poe wasn't falling asleep anymore.

“Of course,” he said.

“I mean before.”

Poe knew that was what he meant. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”

In the morning, Finn had to leave on the early side to catch the airbus to a meeting about citizen militias. He didn't get back until late that night, and neither of them brought it up again.

*

Poe's wedding day, the twelfth day of the month of Tro, began as his days on Gdoxo 5 usually did: with Finn spooned up to his back, cool blue light filtering in through the skylights, and then with caf from the pot he'd set to brew the night before. By the time he'd finished his second cup, Finn was out of the fresher and ready for Poe to hand him a bowl of congee, also made the night before. He was dressed in one of his two suits, and his face was unusually somber, but he kissed Poe and made a face at the taste of caf and toothpaste together, and that was normal too.

Another departure from routine was that as Poe was putting his boots on, BB-8 trundled up to him with a polishing rag in one of his pincer extensions.

Poe groaned. “Beeb, c'mon.”

BB-8 whirled his dome and strobed his lights, his way of saying _party. _He'd done it two months ago when he and Poe moved into the apartment with Finn, buzzing through the rooms until he found his charging station and then nestling in. “It isn't a party,” Poe said. “We're just going down to to the wardhall, we'll be done in a couple hours tops, and then Finn has to go to work and I have to go to the medcenter.” He'd agreed to set the testing and fitting process in motion as soon as they had the paperwork in hand, because otherwise what was the point to any of this?

BB-8 rocked in place, made a long-suffering whistle and waved the polishing rag a little more aggressively.

“Fine,” Poe said, took it from him, and began running it over the brushed-durasteel carapace, the lights, the settings of the switches, and the speaker, through which BB-8 was emitting a quiet, satisfied burble. Out of the corner of his eye, Poe could half-see, half-feel Finn watching them—he always approached from Poe's good side now. The shape of him, the knowledge of him there, was doing things to Poe's internal arrangements that he couldn't define and didn't want to. He dangled the cloth from his hand at sensor level. “There you go, Beebs,” he said, “all shined up,” and stood, and looked at Finn.

“Ready when you are,” Finn said.

They walked downtown—not a long walk, and a light breeze blowing in the wind-powered generators. In the shade of the double row of municipally planted brushtail grasses, taller than a Wookiie and giving out their gently astringent fragrance, Finn took Poe's hand, and they walked on like that, BB-8 rolling smoothly on the pavement behind them.The wardhall was low, domed, functional. The Registrar's Office was three floors down.

Mineer and her sister were already waiting, and even Poe could tell that the spangles on their face veils weren't the kind of thing you wear just every day. They didn't know him, so this had to be either a general sense of occasion—someone's getting married, you dress up—or else it was for Finn, in Finn's honor. Once again Poe was gripped by a complicated feeling. Mineer's sister's baby was round and adorable, with skeptical eyebrows, and Poe held out his finger for her to grip, which made everything much simpler for a second.

The door to the stairs opened, and a seemingly impossible array of long limbs emerged, unfolding to reveal the faces of Iolo Arana and Karé Kun. “Already done or haven't started yet?” Iolo inquired, as if it didn't matter much to him either way.

“I told you not to,” Poe started, but emphatically did not finish, because revealed when the two pilots extricated themselves from the doorway was Kes Dameron.

“Dad,” Poe said. He didn't even mean to say it.

“I told him,” Iolo said loudly. “I thought he should be here.”

Before Kes or Poe or Finn or anybody could say anything else, the inner door opened and a Gdoka who looked barely old enough to have a job said, “ Are you all here to get married?”

“Uh,” Finn said, gesturing to himself and Poe. “Just us.”

“We're the witnesses,” Karé explained, also gesturing. The clerk seemed relieved, or at least reassured, and beckoned them all in, and indicated to Finn and Poe where they should stand. Karé and Iolo made a big show of moving so that Kes, a good half a head shorter than them for all his solidity, could be in front and see.

The clerk began reading the formal questions, their answers half legally binding, half ritual. “Yes,” Finn kept saying. “Yes.” The baby started to fuss, and it took Poe a second to realize that the soft melody being played to calm her was coming from BB-8. It took him nearly a minute to realize that Finn's part of it was over, and the clerk was watching him expectantly.

Instead of looking at her, Poe looked at Finn. One of his favorite things to do, in any situation: just before they dropped from a rocky outcrop into the waiting skimmer below, ahead of a mob of sentients wielding heavy artillery; open and lost and glazed with sweat and pleasure; jaw set grimly, facing down a former commanding officer; sleeping off a mission or a round-the-clock strategy session; frowning and focused as they made their next plan. When "the rest of their lives" was more likely to be thirty minutes than thirty years. Now, Finn's face was still, and whole, and waiting. “Yes,” Poe said, to whatever the clerk had said, but really to Finn.

“Do you promise to hold in common with Finn whatever comes into your possession?”

“Yes.” Fucking contractual bullshit, but at the same time, Finn _was _welcome to anything he had, and always had been, such as it was. So was anyone else, if they needed it, but he knew that wasn't the point.

“Do you promise to tell Finn the truth, proud or ashamed, welcome or unwelcome, small or great?”

“Yes.” Ugh. But also, yes. At least most of the time. Probably. When he knew what it was.

“Do you promise to be by Finn's side, well and ill, strong and weak, in ease and in hardship, in calm and in anger, in joy and in grief, in living and dying--”

This was much easier than he'd expected! Everything on that list was something he had every intention of doing anyway, things he _wanted _to do, he couldn't in fact think of anything but dying that would stop him from—

He choked a little, and looked at Kes, who was looking back at him.

“--till the day of his death or yours,” the clerk repeated, and Kes jerked his head, just barely:_ Don't say it to me, say it to him._

“Yes,” Poe said, looking into Finn's face again. This was just a description of what they were already doing. That was all it was. Doing it was the hard part, the long haul. Meaning it was easy.

“May that day be distant,” the clerk said formally. “Witnesses, do you affirm what you have heard today?”

The witnesses all said yes in their various tones and volumes, including an enthusiastic beep from BB-8 that made the stenographer droid in the corner jump a little.

“The Planetary Authority of Gdoxo 5 recognizes the commitment you have made,” the clerk intoned, “and regards you as joined in law and in fact from this day forward.”

That was it, that was the whole thing. They were free to go. They were free to go together.

In the outer hall, a group of five was waiting, looking anxious. Poe smiled at them, probably. His head was buzzing. Karé was hugging him, holding him away to squeeze his shoulders, hugging him again. Iolo was smirking. While Mineer tried to get her niece, who couldn't actually talk yet, to tell Finn congratulations, Poe found his father. “I'm gonna kick Iolo's ass,” he said into Kes's shoulder.

“I'm gonna kick yours,” Kes said. “Was it that you didn't want anybody there, or you didn't want me?”

“Anybody. But that was stupid. I get it now.”

“I doubt it,” Kes said. “But you will.”

They held each other tighter, and Kes was crying too. Finn crossed to them, and Kes held out an arm for him and squeezed them both before letting go.

Finn said, in his ordinary voice, “You want me to come with you to the medcenter? Mineer says she can hold it down, there's nothing they specifically need me for today.”

“It's okay,” Poe started to say, and then walked it back. “Yeah, it'd be good. That is—Dad, what are you--”

“According to Iolo, we're drinking at your place tonight,” Kes said, shrugging. “Thought I'd stick around for that. I can grab a bunk in the guest hostel if you don't have room at the apartment.”

Iolo, having heard his name, swayed over. “And I will be _more _than happy to keep you entertained in the meantime, while these two do whatever dreary domestic thing they just agreed to do.”

Karé elbowed him. “He's getting his eye fixed, asshole, remember?”

_Yeah, Arana, why do you think we went through all this, _Poe probably would have said a few hours ago. But it wasn't true, and it wouldn't have been true then. And-- “I didn't tell you that,” he said sharply.

“No,” Karé agreed. “But nobody here is new, Dameron.” It was true; the baby had left with her mother and aunt in a flurry of gurgles and congratulations.

“You didn't want to worry us, right?” The sarcasm Iolo loaded onto the word _worry_ was heavy enough to keep his X-wing from taking off. “Noble war hero suffers in silence!”

“We all saw how you got after Andatar. We would've called you on it except we knew Finn had it on lock.” Karé patted Finn's shoulder. “You really _don't _deserve him, by the way, I can say that now 'cause you're married.”

He had to leave. He had to leave, or he was going to say something terrible, something cruel, he didn't know what yet but _something _that would make them—

“Hey,” Finn said. “We should probably get down to the medcenter in case there's a line. BB-8, can you go with Kes and we'll see you back at the apartment?”

They took the stairs, a chorus of beeps and “See you tonight!” and “You better have your pants back on when we get there!” cut off by the door. “Didn't want to wait for the lift,” Finn said in an undertone. Poe was still trying to get his combination of anger and shame under control. By the time they were about half a block away from the wardhall, he had enough of a handle on it to say, “Thanks for getting us out of there. I was about to lose it.”

“I know,” Finn said.

And he did know. He had known. Just like that, the remains of Poe's shame and anger (and doubt and resentment and fear) sank to their lowest ebb. What was left was Finn's knowledge of him, and his of Finn, and their attention to each other, and all of their reasons for being together. Poe held out his hand, and Finn took it, and they walked on. “Medcenter's this way,” Finn said a few minutes later, tugging gently in the direction they needed to go.


End file.
